Tag: Oklahoma Nights Series

Red Hot and Blue Series

Real Men -the other 99%

I was just reading about how there is yet another series of books to be launched about Navy SEALs. Here’s the thing– yes, my first romance stories that I wrote way back in 2006 featured Spec Ops (these are the Red Hot & Blue series short stories that are still being rereleased slowly but surely by Samhain Publishing). My choice then to feature these elite teams was for a number of reasons–I was reading Suzanne Brockmann and Alison Kent’s series at the time who both also feature special operations, the real life Task Force 145 was all over the news regarding al-Zarkawi, and I knew next to nothing about the military back then and figured if I invented a team of Black Ops, already known for their secrecy, I’d be less likely to mess things ups. What happened next is this, while researching military details for the writing of those books, I came in contact with the real life boots on the ground–the infantrymen, the tankers, the average Joes, the guys I routinely see in cammies while I’m on a layover in the Atlanta airport. And I realized THESE were the guys whose stories needed to be told. Not just […]

Cowboys, Romance Novels

The infamous fried bologna scene…

What happens when you take one grill ninja, add one inspired romance author… and mix with a BBQ smoked bologna sandwich? You get…I remember it this way… I had just started writing my 83,000 word contemporary western romance, my first for Kensington Publishing, my first of that daunting length, so of course, I was wasting time networking on Twitter. I’d noticed that one of my new followers had a URL for a restaurant located in Drumright, OK in their Twitter profile bio. So I cruised on over to the website to check it out. My reason being, the book I was working on was set in Stillwater, Oklahoma. I thought it might be fun to have the characters drive to an actual existing establishment for a date. And, the New Yorker in me also needed an example of Oklahoma menu fare, to add realism. Little did I know what would happen next. I checked out the menu at Joseph’s Fine Foods, and made a comment on Twitter that I wasn’t sure even I could make their signature smoked fried bologna sandwich sexy, even if it was “hickory smoked and deep fried and served topped with cheddar cheese”. That began an exchange […]

Romance Novels

What’s Next?

I’ve been getting questions about what’s coming next from me in my current series, so I figured I’d do a quick review here. I’ve grouped it by series, rather than chronologically. Model Soldier (Red, Hot & Blue, Book 8) is my next release. Coming from Samhain Publishing it is scheduled for December. You can read the blurb here. I’ve already proofed the final file so I expect it to be up on preorder any day now. I’ll let you know when it is. It is category length at approximately 54,000 words and will be released first as an eBook, and then as a trade paperback the following year. It is a standalone story featuring a new character as the hero, as well as an Army platoon in Afghanistan. However, the Task Force Zeta SpecOp characters you know and love from other Red, Hot & Blue series books play a role in the story. Though the story stands alone, you will want to grab the free 10,000 word bonus read BB DALTON to fully appreciate the back story of Model Soldier. It’s available free here at my site, from Amazon for Kindle, at KOBO, on Barnes & Noble for Nook, on […]